From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andreas Enge Subject: Re: Python 3 binaries Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2013 19:50:58 +0200 Message-ID: <20130901175058.GA32257@debian> References: <20130831153018.GA5442@debian> <5222282D.7000801@gmail.com> <20130901092817.GA19604@debian> <87d2osoczg.fsf@gnu.org> <20130901143907.GA23394@debian> <87k3j0igz8.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45010) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VGBns-0000xI-7d for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 01 Sep 2013 13:51:19 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VGBnk-0001Ql-EN for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 01 Sep 2013 13:51:12 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87k3j0igz8.fsf@gnu.org> List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Ludovic =?iso-8859-15?Q?Court=E8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org On Sun, Sep 01, 2013 at 07:34:03PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > However, my understanding from what Cyril and Brandon said is that users > may prefer to have it called ‘python3’ by default, so they can install > both Python 2 and Python 3 in parallel. Furthermore, they can choose to > have (say) an alias python=python3 if that’s what they want. > > Based on that, I thought the wrapper would be mostly for internal > consumption. > > Did I get it right? > > My understanding was that users (really: Python developers) would expect > to get a ‘python3’ binary when they install the latest, and a ‘python’ > binary otherwise. My impression was that most people would like to install the latest and greatest (python 3), but with the binary still called "python". These people could install python-default (the wrapper, which I would then expect to be the package that the average user would install). Developers who want both versions can install python-2 and python-3. The Debian python policy stipulates the following: "Python scripts depending on the default Python version (...) or not depending on a specific Python version should use python (without a version) as the interpreter name. Python scripts that only work with a specific Python version must explicitly use the versioned interpreter name (pythonX.Y)." Following this policy (which we may or may not do), if we declare Python 3 to be the default python version, then our python-3 package should contain a binary named "python", and we would have to delete the "python" binary from the version 2 package and keep only those named "python2" and "python2.7". And we should, for internal use, create a wrapper package python-default-2... But indeed, it would be nice to get our python specialists' opinion. Andreas